3D-Printed Guns: Your Questions Answered

Are they legal? How does it work? Here's what you need to know about 3D-printed guns.

Look out, world. The first 3D-printed gun has been successfully test fired. Over the weekend, reporters captured 25-year-old law student Cody Wilson of the University of Texas successfully firing the 3D-printed weapon.

The gun, also known as the Liberator, was fired near Austin, Texas. It appears (at least based on the video) that the gun held a single bullet, a .22 rimfire. The BBC indicated that the gun's components were entirely fabricated from ABS plastic, save for the firing pin (a nail, according to the BBC). If the gun were to be transported, it would also need to have a six-ounce ingot of steel embedded within it, to make the gun "visible" to an X-ray scanner or metal detector, putting it within the constraints of U.S. law. However, it is legal to manufacture your own handguns, providing you apply for a license and a permit, and follow local state law. (Wilson lives in Texas, which allows considerable leniency where firearms are concerned.)

However, merely owning a 3D printer isn't good enough - just like owning an iPod doesn't mean that you'll have access to unlimited MP3s. But you will need the appropriate hardware, as well as the designs of the parts itself. That's the tricky bit, of course, technically and legally.

That's where Wilson and his company, Defense Distributed, come in. Defense Distributed launched in August with the goal of providing schematics for a working plastic gun that could be downloaded and reproduced by anybody with a 3D printer (which, with the help of Staples, could soon be a lot of people). The group raised the necessary $20,000 in a grassroots online campaign, but before Wilson could even unbox the Stratasys uPrint SE unit he'd leased, the company showed up at his house to pick it up.

Building guns isn't all Wilson is interested in, though. In March, he revealed an "open search engine for all 3D printable parts," or Defcad. That will eventually be where the online repository of gun CAD designs will be found.

What other questions do you have about 3D-printed guns? Here are some of the answers.